China couldn't get a local ICE industry running no matter how many times it tried in the 70s, 80s and 90s. So they made a bet on the next technology.

They not only didn't have a local industry, they knew they couldn't make one and adjusted government policy.

They do actually make ICE cars and hybrids as well, it's not just electrics.

They do but they were not on par with foreign competitors.

> People hold up China as an example but China was not displacing any local industry including its own. It's incredibly easy to do that because it's greenfield. Fast forward 20 to 30 years when new thinking might impact BYD or CATL's bottom line? They may not look so forward-thinking.

I would add that despite joint ventures, China's domestic internal combustion engine industry never really caught up. In fact their best engines were made by wholly domestic companies but those were not nearly as good as those made by Western and Japanese companies.

As Warren Buffet noted over a decade ago, BEV is an opportunity for China to simply skip over all of that and just leapfrog everyone else. So it's even better than greenfield. It's green field for them while allowing them to completely disrupt existing foreign competitors.